The Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) has awarded the UConn Humanities Institute (UCHI) a grant of $25,000 for their project “Reading Between the Lines: An Interdisciplinary Glossary for Human-Centered AI.” Funded by CHCI’s Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies Initiative, this grant will allow UCHI along with our partners at the International University of Rabat (UIR) to create an interdisciplinary glossary that interrogates the meaning of key AI concepts.
This project brings an international cohort of humanists, engineers, and scientists into conversation through an in-person symposium and a series of podcast dialogues illuminating how the definitions of terms associated with Artificial Intelligence vary widely by discipline, location, and language. The symposium and the podcasts will be structured to address the challenges that language and translation (both conceptual and linguistic) pose to collaboration on AI research.
“We often use the same words—like ‘learning’ or ‘intelligence’—when we are talking about AI, but what those words mean depend on our own academic and cultural background and the assumptions that accompany them,” notes Anna Mae Duane, PI and Director of the UConn Humanities Institute. “The humanities bring crucial insights about language and meaning that can help us to engage these gaps in constructive ways. Working with our partners at the International University of Rabat in Morocco, we’ll bring together voices from computer science, medicine, law, and the humanities to develop better ways of understanding each other and this transformative technology.”
This project showcases UCHI’s interdisciplinarity and its growing global connections. “Reading Between the Lines” draws on the expertise of the Humanistic AI Working Group, a cross-disciplinary team of over twenty UConn researchers, who have been meeting monthly since Fall 2024, and deepens UCHI’s pre-existing partnership with AI scholars at UIR. Through CHCI’s Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies Initiative, the grant project will bring UCHI and affiliated faculty into conversation with additional humanities centers and institutes all over the world who are launching projects related to AI, digital technologies, and the human.
The project is being led by Anna Mae Duane, UCHI Director and Professor of English, with the support of collaborators including Clarissa J. Ceglio, UCHI Associate Director of Collaborative Research and Associate Professor of Digital Humanities; Nasya Al-Saidy, UCHI Managing Director; Dan Weiner, Vice Provost of UConn Global Affairs; Allison Cassaly, Global Initiatives Coordinator, UConn Global Affairs; and Ihsane Hmamouchi, Vice-Dean at the International Faculty of Medicine at the International University of Rabat.
